


no virtue like mercy

by thegreatpumpkin



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M, did you want your day wrecked because this will totally wreck your day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 08:21:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7567015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegreatpumpkin/pseuds/thegreatpumpkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Instead of Mandos' halls, Ecthelion wakes in Angband after the Fall of Gondolin—and worse still, he isn't alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no virtue like mercy

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr prompt from calicoprofessor: Rog/Ecthelion + places they shouldn't be
> 
> By “places they shouldn’t be” you meant Angband, right? (oh my god I am so sorry for this)
> 
> Warnings for unrelenting bleakness, blood, non-graphic descriptions of traumatic injury, and (implied) major character death.
> 
> **Credit where credit's due:** This Rog, particularly the notion of him being a former thrall of Angband, is taken from [calicoprofessor](http://calicoprofessor.tumblr.com).
> 
> The concept for how Songs/Words of Power work is stolen wholesale from [siadea](siadea.tumblr.com), and the Salgant referenced here is definitely hers also.

Waking was agony.

Ecthelion could feel every part of his body with an awful clarity. The first time it happened, all he could do was lie still and breathe shallowly; eventually, the edges fuzzed again, and he was granted the mercy of sleep for a little longer.

The second time was nearly as bad, but the pain had ebbed just enough for him to be aware of a feeling like something was sitting on his chest. He couldn’t draw a full breath; when he tried, it turned into a racking cough that seemed to go on and on. Something grotesque swam before his eyes and made a guttural noise in his direction, but he didn’t stay conscious long enough to know if it was real or a fever dream.

The third time, his mind was clearer. Everything still ached, but he could breathe again, with only a faint rattle. As he lay still, he became aware that he was in a low-ceilinged cavern, lit by the dim red glow of smoky fires. This was not like any tale of Mandos’ Halls that he knew of; but neither was he a wandering spirit. He felt very firmly—if unhappily—anchored to his body. He was surrounded by the scents of death and decay.

Very cautiously, he turned his head.

He found himself in a haphazard row of elven corpses. His heart seized; then the body beside him twitched, and he realized they were not corpses after all. Badly wounded, then, like he was. Underground, and badly wounded, and tossed in a heap like broken dolls; he knew where they were, then, and wished he did not.

He tried to marshal the strength to sit up, but before he could, there was a harsh barking down the line. No, not barking, speech—a tongue that made his very skin crawl. A goblin kicked one of the bodies, which emitted an unmistakably elven yelp. “Up! Work now!” it hissed in barely-intelligible Sindarin, then went back to shouting in its own native language until the form shuddered to its feet. Ecthelion did not recognize the woman, but the remains of her clothing looked Gondolin-made. One arm hung useless and unmoving at her side, and she seemed barely able to walk, but the goblin drove her on until both were beyond Ecthelion’s view.

So this was where they were left, to die of their injuries or to recover and become thralls.

Another goblin came down the line with a gnarled staff, occasionally poking a heap with it—looking for those who were either conscious or dead, Ecthelion realized, and immediately sent his muscles slack and his gaze sleeping-distant. It was difficult not to follow the goblin with his eyes as it drew closer, but he fought the urge. It poked the young man beside Ecthelion, who was on death’s door if not actually in its parlor just yet, but then shuffled on without giving him a second glance. When it had moved around a corner and out of sight, Ecthelion dared to look down the line again.

Some of the faces were familiar. Others were unrecognizable, destroyed in a myriad of awful but not-quite-fatal ways. He tried anyway, feeling as if somehow he owed it to them to remember. When he could see no further without sitting up, he turned his head to the other side, as slowly and inconspicuously as possible.

His heart dropped again. There were three prone forms between them, but Rog was unmistakable. Ecthelion knew those tattoos intimately, would have recognized him even if his face had not made it through as intact as it had. Still, if there was some small mercy, it was that he did not have to see Rog destroyed beyond familiarity.

But then again, to see him _here_ —that was no mercy. Rog, of all people. The Noldor were forsaken, but it was Rog—and, no doubt, many more of the Avari—who were here again, after surviving it once. There was no rescue for any of them; the Valar did not care, whether they were kinslayers or bystanders or dark elves.

There was no rescue for any of them, save that which they delivered up themselves.

Escape would not be an option, at least not for any of them lying here. They were too wounded, too weakened, even if some of them did recover. Rog’s hair was matted with blood from a head wound; though it had now closed up, there was no telling how disoriented he might be on waking, maybe even insensible.

Ecthelion lay still again and tried frantically to think.

Of course he had nothing of use with him. His armor had been stripped away, no doubt salvaged for the steel. He could recognize the rags he wore as what remained of his padded under-armor, burned through in places and glued to his skin with gore in others, but there was nothing deadly he could make of them. He felt slowly across the stone floor beneath him; there were a few loose rocks, but none of them were sharp enough to do much damage.

Even at his best, he doubted he could have suffocated Rog, and he certainly did not have the strength for it now.

There was nothing. Or—almost nothing. The sort of something that was barely worth hoping over. It would make him a target, and it would fail, and then there would be no more chances.

There were no goblins in sight. He forced himself up to a sitting position, pausing as the world swam. Then, as swiftly as he could, he crawled down the line to Rog.

_Maybe he will die without my aid_ , he thought, and it was terrible for such a thought to bring such comfort. Despite Rog’s largely unmarred face, he looked near as bad as Ecthelion’s previous neighbor. Besides the head wound there was a long, ragged gash along his left side, still oozing blackish blood. His chest barely moved as he breathed.

Then again, Ecthelion had tangled with a balrog and still lived to see this place. He could not trust to chance.

Here at the end of things, he could freely admit that he had never had Salgant’s gift. His voice was fine enough to listen to, but there was no eldritch power in it. In his lifetime he’d only ever sung one Word successfully, and “success” was a questionable measure here; the Word was _Stop_ , and he could, with a great deal of mental preparation, _sometimes_ persuade a person to pause in their tracks. Not in battle, or even in council; only in his own study, with his cousins as patient volunteers. He half-wondered, too late, if it had never worked at all and they’d only been humoring him.

Even if they hadn’t been, there was a vast distance between persuading a walker to pause, and persuading a heart to stop beating, eternally.

It was nothing, less than nothing. It was all he had.

There was no proper way to prepare, but he laid his head against Rog’s shoulder, his hand over Rog’s heart. He closed his eyes, taking two slow, deep breaths, and let himself pretend for just a moment that none of this had happened. That they were still in Gondolin, lying together in the tangled mess of Ecthelion’s sheets; that in a few hours the first grey glow of dawn would creep in and Rog would pin him down against them again until he begged, laughing, for mercy.

_Please, grant us mercy._

Ecthelion drew one last breath, and he Sang.

**Author's Note:**

> I am REALLY sorry. :D I ruined my own day too. I wrote another much happier fill for this prompt too, if that helps.


End file.
